465 Responses

Well if you have enough money jonkey will bend over backwards to give you a hand to slip in the back door, if you have even more jonkey will get the rest of us to bend over forwards.If you have even more then you can buy NZ Ltd.jonkey will do you a good deal.

OK, I’m still wading through the Dotcom bail application decision (thanks Russell for the link & NBR for posting it), but have I missed the part with actual evidence for these assertions?

Secret evidence from a customs official helped a judge decide that internet multimillionaire Kim Dotcom should stay behind bars.

In a bail decision released yesterday, Judge David McNaughton said the official showed how someone could slip abroad by obtaining false passports.

An affidavit presented in closed court warned of the “porous” nature of New Zealand’s borders if Dotcom tried to flee by boat or plane from outside the main centres.

To be a little cynical, it’s hardly a MegaSecret that 1) not very nice people use false papers for nefarious purposes and 2) Since we don’t live in North Korea or Escape from New York the state doesn’t monitor ever jetty and airfield. It hardly makes a slam dunk case that Dotcom could pull a Lord Lucan.

Wonderful argument that nobody should ever get bail for anything – after all, what’s to stop anyone from ‘going bush’ and skipping a court date? If you want to take it to the reductio ad aburdum, there's only one way to completely eliminate "flight risk" - nobody gets bail of any kind and we 'refocus' the corrections spend into 'capacity building' for remand prisoners.

The judgement on bail seems well within reason. Surely it must be reasonable to think that a man with passports in multiple names, with hidden bank accounts in false names, a safe bolthole that won't extradite him to the USA, and so-on, is a flight risk. After all, if he isn't, who on earth is?

Everyone who gets bail is at some risk of flight or reoffending. That has to be weighed against the right not to be jailed without conviction.

It seems that there is a good chance that Schmidt's conduct won't amount to an extraditable offence in NZ. The US authorities may well be using the criminal process to disrupt his activities and deter others rather than having an expectation of a conviction.

The double stupidity is that firstly Mr Dot Com gets to buy his way in albeit with $10 million in bonds (so do all people purchasing NZ Bonds at a set amount get residency?) and secondly the arrest for the FBI and application for extradition – it is a double own goal for NZ.

With regard the investment class – to my mind someone investing in NZ is someone who comes here with a plan to set up a business one that creates jobs, produces something in NZ and adds to the economy. Residency obtained under the investment class is contingent in them actually doing that thing – setting up the business.

I can’t stand it when the media call Mr Key and Mr Fay and others businessmen/people – they are not what I call businessmen/people.

I think we all take that as read, Red – I’d just like to think the rule of law (including BORA) protects everyone, even the MegaDodgyDouche-nozzles. :)

The judgement on bail seems well within reason.

I’ll grant that relying on The Herald is a dangerous thing, and that’s where I have a difficulty. On the face of it, this super-secret affidavit from an unnamed Customs official seems to have stated the bleeding obvious without closing the argument that Dotcom’s flight risk is so severe even a curfew, mandatory reporting & electronic monitoring isn’t an option.

And for all I know, there may be perfectly legitimate reasons for Schmidt holding multiple passports under different names. Buggered if I know.

Perhaps I’m just a wet liberal(-ish) pussy, but I’m not entirely convinced the cone of silence here is entirely justified. And while it's not entirely relevant to the matter in hand, if Customs are genuinely of the opinion that our borders are as "porous" as Swiss cheese gone over with a shotgun, I think there's a legitimate public interest in that being in the public domain.

Everyone who gets bail is at some risk of flight or reoffending. That has to be weighed against the right not to be jailed without conviction.

Um, yes, everyone is a flight risk to some extent. But very few people appearing before New Zealand courts are millionaires with hidden bank accounts, multiple passports, a strong incentive to flee, and so-on. There are degrees of risk, and he's at the high end. Seriously: if you think that isn't possible to reasonably consider Dotcom isn't a flight risk, who can you consider a flight risk?

And you know, his associates thought it was likely he'd take the money and run. It's not like it wouldn't be attractive to fly to Germany in order to avoid years in the US prison system, even if it did mean losing a lot of money.

I’ll grant that relying on The Herald is a dangerous thing, and that’s where I have a difficulty. On the face of it, this super-secret affidavit from an unnamed Customs official seems to have stated the bleeding obvious without closing the argument that Dotcom’s flight risk is so severe even a curfew, mandatory reporting & electronic monitoring isn’t an option.

From reading the judgement, the affidavit was given in closed court because it detailed exactly how porous the border is and how easy it was to get false documentation edit: and how one would go about it, but that's just my reading.

Re questions about evidence standards, this may not be relevant to the bail application itself but I note that the Extradition Act provides the US with a fast track. US is an “exempted country” under the Extradition (Exempted Country: United States of America) Order 1999. That means that it does not need to comply with the prima facie case standard in section 24(2)(d)(i) of the Extradition Act and can instead present a “record of its case” (summary of evidence and copies of documents and photographs) under section 25.

So, there’s an interlocutory argument waiting to go all the way to the Supreme Court for a start.